A/N: I hope you all enjoy this one! It's a personal favorite of mine, and quite a long one. Thanks for reading! As a side note, please remember that we are not doing trigger warnings before specific chapters (except if we come across anything we feel we don't cover in the content warnings at the beginning). Familiarize yourself with those! -Julianne

...how I got this way...

Svetlana | Silmarilz1701

Months into their stay in Camp Mackall and the Americans still whined about crawling around on maneuvers. They could go on and on when they wanted to. 'Sobel's a jackass,' 'it's wet,' 'how are we supposed to learn anything following these directions?' Not that she didn't agree with their complaints against Captain Sobel. But ever since those roses...

Sveta readjusted her helmet. They'd done a jump before sunrise into a nearby part of the state. The sun should've risen, but the clouds had opened and rain made the world grey. She yawned. From her position crouched behind a tree, she could see the enlisted setting up foxholes. They had to defend their position until Major Strayer told them otherwise.

About three meters to the right, Luz and Perconte had a foxhole. Beyond them were Sisk and Hoobler. After a moment of peering through the haze, she found Martin with Cobb. That wouldn't end well. Cobb had too much of a mouth on him. He liked to talk about his experiences in Africa, scare as many of the more fragile men as he could. Martin didn't take kindly to that.

Scanning the pine forest, Sveta looked for any sign of enemies. They had to defend against Dog Company, a company she had come across more than once. They mostly ignored her and Zhanna. In the beginning, Zhanna had mentioned their whistles and jeers. But it hadn't taken long for them to lose interest.

A heavy raindrop fell on her face, splashing into her eye. Sveta growled out a Russian curse. To her left, she saw Blithe flinch where he sat with Randleman. She rolled her eyes. They had never quite gotten used to her language.

She could hear a few murmurs below the rain. The squelch of boots on muddy ground filled the air, and she whipped around, standing upright. Welsh came up behind her, water droplets rolling down his metal helmet and dripping from his nose. He grimaced.

"See anything?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No." All she could see were dark trees and huddled men.

"So. What's Russia like?"

Sveta turned. The question caught her off guard. Welsh just observed her, the edges of his mouth creeping up into a small smile. She didn't answer. It confused her. Why was he asking? What did he want to know?

"I've heard it's cold."

"Yes. It can be cold," she agreed. After a moment of watching the forest, she turned back to him. Since he'd arrived a month ago, she'd come to respect Welsh. Not like him, but respect him. Kind of like Martin and Randleman. He did his job well and didn't watch her like Nixon. "Why?"

"Honestly?" He shrugged, chewing on some gum. "When someone gets scared by a bunch of flowers, I get curious. Nixon thinks I'm crazy to ask. I figured it's better to ask than snoop around your files."

She turned back to him. No one had ever said anything like that to her. For a moment, her expression softened. He didn't watch her, just looked past her and the trees into the haze.

"Nixon didn't send you to beg for answers, then?" she muttered. "I know he's watching us. I'm not stupid."

Welsh smirked. "No. Like I said, he doesn't think you'll tell me anything."

She turned away from him again. Still no sign of Dog, just more rain and more wind. The noise would obscure the enemy. But their sentries had found nothing. On the one hand, she knew telling him anything would be dangerous. She found it unlikely that Lieutenant Welsh was a spy, and she'd decided a while ago that Nixon wasn't NKVD. But there were ears everywhere.

Then she looked around. The trees didn't have ears. And between the rain and the wind, even the enlisted men wouldn't really be able to hear. So she turned back to him. "What do you want to know, Lieutenant?"

"I don't know. You tell me. What makes someone afraid of flowers?"

"Experience," she told him. Experience. Knowledge. Self-preservation. That was all he would get about Beria. "What else?"

"Alright. Are you a spy?"

She turned to him in surprise. "If I was, would I tell you?"

Welsh laughed. "Thought I'd ask. Your dad's Stalin's buddy though."

"Yes."

"Are you?"

She froze again. Her heart beat faster, the pounding in her chest all too familiar. But the rain continued. The wind rustled the branches. "It would be dangerous to say otherwise," she told him. "I'm Russian. If I were to say I found Stalin despicable, they could accuse me of treason."

He smiled. "What else are you not allowed to say, as a good Russian?"

"Many things," she admitted. She could tell by the way he listened carefully and maintained a tight smile that he understood what she was doing. She couldn't disown Stalin outright, but there were more ways to communicate than straight answers. "If I said anything that could be used as proof of my disloyalty, it would not end well for me or Zhanna."

"Or your family, I presume?"

Her jaw clenched. Anger surged through her. Stained bed-sheets, limp hands, the dark barrel of a Korovin pistol flashed across her mind. Welsh must've seen a change, because he turned to her head-on. "Not good?"

"My mother, Veronika Samsonova, died in 1940," she said, seething. "Killed herself with her husband's pistol. She was weak, disloyal. A disgrace to Russians everywhere," she said.

"Or so Stalin says," Welsh surmised.

"Lieutenant, I would never dream of contradicting the Premier of all Russia."

He hummed in agreement. A silence fell between them, filled only by pitter-pattering rain. Sveta looked out. She narrowed her eyes. A movement to the left, past where they'd deployed the edge of the platoon, caught her eye.

"What?" he asked her. Welsh followed her gaze.

She bit her cheek. Sveta took out her rifle. They had blanks only, and not many at that. Apparently the Americans feared dirtying their guns. She couldn't be sure, but Sveta's gut told her to be ready. Memories of Smolensk made her muscles tighten and breathing slow.

The first shot made the enlisted jump. Sveta just flattened herself against the tree trunk, her body ignoring the knot that dug into her shoulder blade. Welsh dove to a tree nearby before shouting orders. Sveta slowed her breathing. Focus. Breathe.

She readied her gun. Chaos echoed around her, enlisted men shooting off blanks wildly, some better aimed than others. The shouting escalated. With a nod to no one, Sveta tightened her grip. Then she spun out from behind the tree.

Her first shot hit a man straight in the chest. He stammered something, cursed, and lowered himself to the ground. One down. Mere seconds passed before her next blank found a target, and the third. Her fourth went wide of a short but stout paratrooper with a blue armband and she used the tree as cover again.

Slow the breathing. Focus. Sveta tried to block out the surrounding noise. With a shaky inhale she readied herself again. She raised her gun.

When she spun out from behind the tree, she came face to face with a man a few inches taller than her. He had dark eyes. And apparently a strong grip, as he ripped her rifle out of her hands and sent her stumbling back. It took a moment for her to recover. But as he raised his own gun, she dove forward and collided with him.

It knocked him back. Sveta wasted no time. She grabbed the gun, her hands slipping a bit in the rain as she tried to wrestle it from him. In the scuffle, his foot slid in mud and he hit a tree awkwardly. It gave her the edge she needed.

The gun slammed into the ground a meter away. She stared at the man across from her. Even in the rain she recognized him. Speirs. He locked eyes with her as he picked himself back up from the tree. They'd never formally met. Sveta saw her own rifle behind him. He looked at his behind her.

Before she could move to his gun, he lunged. Sveta tried to dodge, but in the increasingly muddy forest, her boots slipped. Sveta groaned as she slammed into a tree root. A sharp pain and the taste of blood filled her mouth. Her helmet rolled away.

With a furious grunt, she rolled over and grabbed his leg as he moved past her to his rifle. Speirs tripped. But as she pushed herself up, her hands digging into the mud they'd kicked up in the spat, her side screamed at her. A pain like an icy dagger ripped through her left chest. Sveta couldn't breathe. Her body gave out, and she fell deeper into the ground.

"Stay down!"

Hair filled with mud and pine needles, she glared up at Speirs. But she was in no position to argue. A neat bruise had already formed on his jaw. With as much fire as she could muster, Sveta smiled.

All around them, her platoon nursed wounds. Where the hell had Sobel been with Third Platoon? As Speirs moved away, picking his rifle off the ground and flicking off the mud, she narrowed her eyes. She hated losing.

As she tried to push herself up, the pain shot through her again. Sveta hissed, grabbing at her side. The nearby tree became her support.

"Lieutenant, are you wounded?"

She looked over. Private Spina, medic. He picked his way to her, his gaze roaming over her messy form. She'd always respected the medics in Russia. But this was America. "I'm fine."

"You need to get back to the rally point. They have an Aid station," he reminded her. Massaging his arm, he grimaced. "Come on. I'm going too. Got shot in the arm," he muttered.

All around her, the men who had been shot with blanks or downed by hand-to-hand grumbled and groaned. Welsh was talking to what looked like a captain, one of Major Strayer's aids, probably. Speirs stood with him. Where the hell was Sobel?

"Lieutenant?"

She turned back to the medic. With a frown, she just nodded. "Fine."

They walked side by side towards a jeep nearby. Sveta objected, insisting she could walk to the rally point, but when Spina prodded at her side and she flinched back, he shook his head. He feared a rib injury. So she clambered up into the back, teeth drawing blood as she bit her cheek against the pain. He joined her.

As luck would have it, the medic on duty at the rally point was Eugene Roe, the ranking medic from Easy. Zhanna had mentioned him once, describing him as quiet but diligent. Before long, she found herself with the two Easy Company medics in a small side tent.

"Rib, I'm guessing," Spina told him. Then he turned to her. "Does it hurt to breathe?"

Sveta sat on a small, portable table. She grimaced. "Some."

"How'd it happen?" Roe asked.

"I fell, hit a tree root."

He nodded. Then he hesitated. "I gotta check for bruising, Lieutenant."

Her heart stopped for a moment. She'd known that was coming. But lifting her shirt even for medics made her pause. Fury smoldered in her chest. Anger at herself, at the weather, at Speirs for tripping her. But she knew better than to yell at a medic.

"Fine." She pulled off her coat first. The movement caused another sharp pain, but she forced it away. Smile, Sveta. Smile through the pain. Or at least don't flinch. Once Spina took her coat, she eased her regular shirt off. The tank top she wore beneath it had been soaked, too. Soaked to the bone.

Roe hesitated, but moved over to her side. He was tall, like Speirs. Dark eyed, too. With careful movements, he rolled up her tank top to get a look at her side. Based on their grimaces, it didn't look good. And as he touched the skin, she just tensed. The pain and the reminder of her mother's warnings fueled the flinch that followed.

"It hurts when you bend?" Roe asked again. He looked up at her, still crouching a bit to get at her side. At her nod, he frowned. "I ain't sure, but I don't think it's a break," he told her. "Definitely bruised it good, though. You're gonna need to stay off it."

"Not possible," she argued.

Spina let out a small laugh, almost a scoff but less angry. His arms folded over his chest. "Listen, Lieutenant, if I learned anything from being trained as a medic, its yah don't mess with rib injuries."

Roe agreed with him. "I said I don't think it's a break, Lieutenant. But you could hurt it further, and it could harm your lungs," he said. "This ain't a suggestion. The doctors'll agree." He frowned. "I'm sorry."

Her fists clenched. It turned her knuckles white. But she reminded herself to smile and nodded. "Fine. How long, then?"

"Four to six weeks," he said. "The doctors'll know more. You should head back to the base. You need to see them."

Smile, Sveta. Breathe. Medics could mean the difference between life or death in the field. It wouldn't do to curse one out in training. So she just nodded. "Fine."

"Come on," Spina said. "I'll head back with yah."

"Trying to make sure I follow your instructions, Private?" she snapped.

Instead of glaring back at her though, he just let out a light laugh. "Yep."

Medics. Sveta shook her head, but slid off the table with care and took her coat from Roe. He offered her a small smile. It was a kind smile. Less guarded than Dick, she found that she liked it. She liked both of them. But she'd never say it out loud. Not yet, at least.

The rain had lessened to a cool mist by the time she reported to Strayer and got formal orders to accompany Spina back to Mackall. It took genuine effort to suppress her discomfort. Even though their driver did his best, the jeep bounced and rocked all the way back.

But Spina just shrugged. He offered a small smile. As the jeep pulled up outside the hospital at Camp Mackall, she sighed. Four to six weeks. She wanted to scream. But she didn't. She just forced on a small smile, following Spina into the hospital with as much poise as she could muster covered in mud.

After x-rays and some ice packs, Sveta eased her way back towards the barracks. Thankfully, her rib hadn't fractured. But even she had grimaced at the purple and red bruising that littered her left chest and abdomen. Each breath stung. Bending made it worse. It took all her patience not to get mad.

The door to their closet crashed as it shut behind her. Stuffy heat filled the small room, dark until she pulled on the overhead lightbulb. Swirling emotions made her collapse into the cot. With her back against the wall, Sveta released a breath. She closed her eyes.

She could feel her cheeks flush in the heat and the frustration. Her head lay against the wall. Injury was the last thing she needed. There was too much going on. Beria loomed over them like a shadow. Well, over her. Not Zhanna. She kept Zhanna as far from him as she could. She would never let that man near her best friend. Tears pricked at her eyes.

But he loomed over her. Welsh's questions from earlier came to mind. Something about it, maybe the way he'd asked without expectation, it nagged at her. Sveta wasn't a stranger to questions. Usually, they were interrogations, sometimes obvious like when she'd arrived in Britain after Tangier. Other times they were subtle, manipulative, underhanded. Dangerous.

Welsh hadn't interrogated her, not in either way. He'd asked her questions, but he'd been upfront about it. He didn't hide his curiosity. He didn't deny Nixon's snooping. Instead, he'd just… asked her.

When a knock at the door woke her up several hours later, Sveta narrowed her eyes. It took a bit of effort, but she slipped her coat on over her tee-shirt and moved to the door.

"Welsh?" she asked. He stood there, sipping at his canteen, looking cleaned up. Sveta narrowed her eyes. "What?"

He frowned. "How's your rib?"

"Bruised, not fractured," she told him. "Where's Lieutenant Casmirovna?"

He rolled his eyes, anger replacing concern. "Sobel has her doing some stupid chore for him. I don't know." Then he tried to soften his expression. He pointed to her side. "What's the recovery time?"

"At least four weeks," she said. Sveta frowned again. Her throat constricted. She could feel her palms sweating. "I assume… I assume you'll tell Nixon what I told you?"

He nodded. "Probably."

She knew fear. She'd known fear for years. But this, this felt different. Be very careful what you say. That's what she'd grown up hearing, even more after 1935. But Veronika Samsonova had died because she'd kept her mouth shut. Sveta didn't want to end up pointing a pistol at her own head.

"I'll come," she stammered. His surprise didn't escape her, and she frowned. "I need to make sure I am fairly represented. You Americans are loose with your words, and often gossips."

That made him laugh. A genuine laugh too, not malicious or scornful. It confused her. But she stepped beyond the closet she'd accepted as her lot in life and closed the door. Harry told her that Nixon had another late night of work in his office, so he and Winters planned to keep him company.

"Did we win?" Sveta asked him. The walk to the Battalion HQ didn't take long, but it reminded her of a month previous when she'd stormed to find Sink and instead found roses.

Welsh scoffed. "No. But we did better than last week."

She nodded. The sunset of reds contrasted the grey skies and rainstorms of the morning. They passed a few officers and enlisted, but overall their section of the camp stayed quiet. Sveta figured anyone who had been involved in the maneuvers was taking advantage of their beds.

When Welsh opened the door to Nixon's office, they interrupted Nixon and Winters chuckling into their canteens. But they stopped as their gaze rested on Sveta. A lump formed in her throat. Nixon's dark eyes reminded her, again, of the spies of Stalin's regime.

"Lieutenant!" Winters said. He stood up from his chair.

Sveta almost found the differences between the three men comical. Nixon, with his carefully crafted smile and sharp eyes. Winters, with his perpetual straight face but kind gaze. Welsh, gap-toothed smile and unworried movements. Of the three, Sveta again found herself thinking Nixon to be the only real threat. She turned to Winters.

"Lieutenants."

"Heard Speirs did a number on you," Nixon joked. "What are you doing up?"

What are you doing up? More like what the hell are you doing, speaking to us willingly. Sveta forced herself to smile, shrugging. "Well. Those reports were exaggerated, Lieutenant."

"Does it hurt?" Winters asked. "Sobel said you'd be out for a month."

Sveta raised her chin, refusing to let them see how it pained her. But she nodded. "It does. Nothing I can't control, I assure you."

After a moment of silence, Nixon smirked again. He slumped back into his chair and tossed a small yellow folder onto the desk. "If you're here to take my whiskey, I will have to say no."

"I prefer vodka."

"What can we do for you, Lieutenant," Winters tried.

They didn't like silence. Sveta couldn't blame them really. She didn't find it particularly pleasant either, not when surrounded by people. Silence in the wilds of Russia, that she could stay in forever. With the wind on her face, she could relax. But not here.

Sveta turned to Nixon. "I know you're monitoring us," she said. "But, I think you already knew that."

They'd gone silent. It would've made her smile if she'd not been terrified of other ears. So she just hesitated. Nixon sat behind his desk, Winters a bit to her right in a chair he'd pulled out. To her left, Welsh leaned against a filing cabinet, arms across his chest. With a silent exhale, she turned around and glanced at the frosted pane of glass in the door. No shadows on the other side. So she turned back.

"Stop digging, Lieutenant," she said.

"Pardon?" Nixon placed his glass of whiskey onto the desk.

Sveta moved a bit further from the door. "All three of you. Stop digging." Hesitating, she glanced around. No glints of hidden mics or odd out-of-place wires caught her eye.

"Be careful what you say to them, Sveta."

"Smile, Sveta. That's what they expect of you."

"Hold your tongue, Sveta. Don't let them see your anger."

Sveta knew fear. She'd known it intimately since 16 April 1935, but it'd always been there. Veronika had known fear until she'd died bleeding out on a mattress. Her mother had died because fear had kept her silent. Sveta couldn't stay silent.

"If I tell you anything, Lieutenant, it stays out of your reports," she insisted. She held his dark gaze. Then she looked at Winters, where he'd settled into his own chair, and at Welsh, where his brow had furrowed and he watched her closely. Then back to Nixon, in his place of security behind his chair. "What do you want to know?"

To her surprise, Nixon didn't speak first. Welsh did. "So why does Casmirovna call you Sveta, but no one else can?" Everyone in the room looked his way. He turned to Nixon and Winters. "What! You're not curious?"

Sveta laughed. She didn't know what she'd expected, but not that. Covering her mouth, she just shook her head. "In Russia, nicknames, shortened forms of our names, they're used only between close friends and family. If someone else were to use it, it's insulting," she admitted. "My full name is Svetlana Alexandrovna Samsonova. Only Zhanna may use Sveta."

"Your father, Alexander Samsonov," Nixon started, "he's a close ally of Stalin." Getting up from his desk, he moved around, sipping at his whiskey. When he came to the front of his desk, he leaned against it, sitting slightly on the polished dark wood top.

Sveta nodded. "Yes."

"How'd you get your scar?" Welsh asked.

Without even thinking, her hand flew to her face. The skin felt smoother where it had scarred over, after a nasty bout of infection. What could she tell them? She needed to tell them enough to placate Nixon. The more she said about herself, the less maybe he would look into Zhanna. That would help. Place the threat to the Americans on herself, not Zhanna.

After a moment, she glanced at Welsh. Taking a deep breath, pain stabbing into her side, she leaned a bit against the door behind her. Winters stood up immediately and offered her the chair. For a moment she just looked at it. It would be easy to subdue her in a chair; both Winters and Nixon had significant height on her. She bit her cheek. For Zhanna. She had to get their attention as far away from her as she could. So she lowered herself into the chair.

"You're sure no one is listening," she finally ventured. At their confusion, she tried to explain. "Have you checked the room for microphones?"

"You're safe," Winters assured her.

Safe. She'd not been safe since she'd been born. But Sveta humored him. "In April 1935, an enemy of Stalin and my father, a man they'd fought in the Revolution, he held me for ransom," she told them. "By then, most of the enemy had been found and dealt with. They'd missed him," she added, bitterness escaping her carefully practiced tone. "I spent ten days in an attic in Rostov-on-Don."

That clearly hadn't been in their dossier on her, because all of them straightened up in surprise. Nixon even breathed out a "Jesus Christ."

"How'd you escape?" Winters asked.

Sveta smiled, but not with her eyes. A bitter smile, an angry smile. "I'm a Samsonova. The NKVD got me out." As Sveta sat there, she could remember the screams. She'd known fear. The faces of the children haunted her at night, children who had been killed for her rescue at her father's command. "So. That's what the scar is from."

"You're scared of them."

Nixon didn't pose it as a question. Them, the NKVD. Them, the men in blue caps with dark eyes, hiding in shadows, waiting for Sveta to step out of line so they could make an example of her. Scared didn't scratch the surface. Scared was listening to ghost stories. Scared was running late for an event.

"Lieutenant, I don't think you grasp what the NKVD is capable of," she started. Sveta could feel the sweat cold against her palms. She glanced at the door. Still no shadows. "There are names worse than Stalin in Russia, and there are things worse than death. At least death is quick."

"Why'd your mom kill herself, Svetlana?" Welsh asked.

She turned to him. Her first name hadn't crossed the lips of a single officer since the first day. She bit her lip. Why had she killed herself? She'd killed herself because death had been a welcome escape.

Sveta turned to Nixon. "You cannot put this in writing, Lieutenant." When he went to respond, she added, "if this gets into writing, you will find out just what the NKVD is capable of."

"Is that a threat?" he asked.

"Yes." At the silence in the air, she let out a tentative breath. "To both of us."

She couldn't stop the way her hand trembled. That mask was slipping. She couldn't let it slip. Not now. Not ever. Not while Beria walked the earth. When all three of them agreed to silence, she nodded.

"One of Stalin's closest friends is Lavrentiy Beria. Stalin appointed him head of the NKVD in 1938. Since then, he has carefully worked his way up the political ladder."

"We know Beria," Nixon confirmed.

"No." Sveta shook her head. "No, you know of him. You do not know him, Lieutenant. My mother and I…" She paused, not sure how to put it, and still concerned for who was listening. But finally she just sighed. "We don't support Stalin. But if Beria could prove that, my father would be executed, and I-" The words caught in her throat.

What would happen? Execution? Or would they bring her into the Beria estate to be used at his whims? Raped until she died? Thrown into the Gulag? Would she be pulled into a side street to be shot by a firing squad?

"Well." Sveta looked down. Gathering herself, calming her nerves, she shook her head. Then she looked up. "My mother couldn't keep hiding. So she shot herself."

"Jesus Christ," Nixon repeated. "Does Beria know any of this?"

"I don't know."

But she did. Sveta knew. The first roses had shown up after the funeral. Red ones, a large bouquet. But not as a condolence gift. Tied to the roses was a name that Sveta recognized immediately. Her governess, the wife of one of her tutors, Zhanna's old host family. The governess who had disappeared after Veronika's death.

Red blood on the mattress. Red roses in a vase. Red flags on the cars.

After that, Sveta knew the game would be harder. She had to keep Zhanna as far away as possible. Stalin's daughter, Lana Stalina, she wouldn't be in danger. Stalin would murder Beria if he touched her. But she, Sveta Samsonova, was the perfect target. Her mother had told her never to accept flowers from him, to never be complicit in his crimes.

Some of the women he took into his estate were never seen from again. Some were arrested as they sobbed and screamed for help on their way out. The ones with the flowers usually had silent tears streaking down their faces as they moved past the guards. And they never once complained.

"Lieutenant? Svetlana-"

They were staring at her. Winters had spoken. It took a moment before she took a breath, not realizing she'd stopped taking in air. She had to leave. She had to get out. But hopefully, Nixon had enough to satisfy his curiosity. Hopefully, he had enough to leave them alone.

"Don't pull on these threads, Lieutenant. You know enough," she said. It sounded shaky at first, so she swallowed, and tried again. "Leave it alone. Leave us alone." She got up to leave, cringing back at the way the movement aggravated her side. "Shit."

"Where are you going?" Welsh asked.

"I need to rest. Aren't those my orders now?" she told him. "And I need to find my friend."

As the door slammed closed behind her, Sveta couldn't get her hands to stop trembling. Everyone assumed she had such power. The way the enlisted would shrink back, how Sobel would defer to her, how Sink kept her happy. Power. Sveta nearly laughed. The closer to power you got, the more dangerous life became. She didn't have power. She had a counterfeit facsimile of power. She had the power Beria allowed her to keep.

The moon shone down above her as she stood outside the headquarters. Every shadow deepened as she looked around. Sveta frowned. She didn't want to be the next name. She didn't want to be the next one to put a bullet in her head to escape. What was the saying, though? Bad things happen in threes?

Nadezhda Alliluyeva Stalina.

Veronika Mikhailovna Samsonova.

Svetlana Alexandrovna Samsonova.